I believe there is a correlation between displacement and seniority within the PLAN. Whereby new crews and officers start off on the smaller stuff like 022s, and more increasingly, 056s before getting promoted to bigger displacement ships like 054As, 052s and 055 etc after they have proven themselves.
The pace of the 056 construction and commissioning is probably going to stay much higher than the bigger ships because in a way, these are being used as a training fleet to get crews up to a point where they are ready to move onto something bigger, that is more complex and tend to sent out on longer deployments.
Think of it as both a recruitment and selection process, whereby the PLAN can fairly reliably decided who amongst the new recruits are suitable for the extra training and investment needed for the top of the line ships as they observe how they perform on the 056.
There is, of course also an operational need for the 056, especially in ASW. And they will be perfect for the SCS should tensions ever warrant their permanent forward deployment.
But we have to remember that the Chinese coast guard has been seeing a similar explosive growth spell that rivals if not exceeds that of the PLAN.
It is these ships that are often being used to feed the medium and smaller sized yards, who tend to not get noticed because they don’t build sexy sexy warships.
This huge expansion of the Chinese coast guard has, in many ways, taken over a lot of the traditional patrol responsibilities of the PLAN in brown and green waters.
And even in those traditional light frigate/corvette green and brown water zones, we are seeing 054s and 052s shadowing foreign ships and fleets, not 056s.
When that aspect is considered, the 056 expansion rate makes most sense from a training POV rather than operational prospective. Because there is neither the need, nor evidence that the 056 fleet are being used in heavy intensity routine green and brown water patrolling duties like the old Soviet bastin strategy. Not in peacetime in any case.
Responses to FONOP are matched based on ship type. If a destroyer or frigate performs the FONOP, it is chased out by another destroyer or frigate. If its a civilian vessel, the Chinese Coast Guard would do it.
Chinese Coast Guard has a very different function from the Navy, as it is also used for law enforcement and rescue operations. The China Coast Guard guards one of the most, if not the most populated and trafficked sea routes in the world.
As for crew seniority, I am likely to think that officers for Type 052Ds are going to be pulled off from 052Cs, which in turn are pulled off from older destroyers, and which in turn are pulled off from 054As, 054s and 053H3s, which in turn are pulled off from 056s and older smaller PLAN vessels. In turn, those from the 056s might be pulled off from 022s or start off fresh. Ships like the Type 051B, 051C, the 052s, the Sovs, and the 052Bs might be used as the training ground for those in the 052C/D. With the remaining Sovs might be going into refitting, their crew might be promoted to the 052Ds. With the 054As being busy of late, there might be a reluctance to promote crews to fill the new 052Ds, as you are going to need to train replacements for the 054As. The response to this is to build larger numbers of frigates, so you are regularly transferring, training, rotating, and retraining, so you can keep up presence and tempo while some frigates are on the port.
PLAN conducts some sort of exercise, the last time was around November in 2017 near the East China Seas, where a rigorous Red Flag exercise are performed among all vessels, but especially Type 056s and likely 022s, and crews get judged by their performance on that. Things like hitting targets at sea, intercepting aerial targets and so on.
Engineering crews for the 052C/D are a different case, they would need to spend some time on a vessel with gas turbines. The 052s and 052Bs would have to be recruited for that purpose. As more 052Ds and 055s comes in, the 052Cs may have to be diverted for training as their jobs are taken over by 052Ds.
